Our Cosmic Ancestors (4 page)

Apollo 16, with Charles M. Duke, Thomas K. Mattingly, and John W.

Apollo 16, with Charles M. Duke, Thomas K. Mattingly, and John W. 27 April, 1972, brought back the most extraordinary photographs in ultraviolet light of the Earth's atmosphere, interplanetary gases, and many stars, constellations, and galaxies.

Apollo 17, with Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans and Harrison H. Schmitt aboard, flew to the Moon on 7 December and returned on 19 December, 1972. The landing spot was in the Taurus-Littrow Valley. This Apollo mission was the longest both in time and in distance covered and also brought back the biggest load of Moon rocks. In addition, Schmitt, a geologist, was the first civilian to visit the Moon, all the other astronauts having been military men. With Apollo 17 the program, which had started in the 1960's with so much enthusiasm, ended amid growing indifference and even some hostility from many
Americans who were shocked to find out how high the cost of the landing on the Moon really was. Some even complained that the live television coverage of the Moon missions had pre-empted their cherished football games.

During these missions several strange things happened. Some still cannot be talked about; and some I will mention without revealing my sources of information and with the utmost reserve, because I personally was not there when the incidents allegedly took place. It could be, for example, that both the American and the Russian space programs did bring back discoveries that were not anticipated.

The American space program was an extraordinary success, but it should not be assumed that everything went smoothly all of the time. There were many technical difficulties to be dealt with in flight, but with the means aboard, the crews could solve them all in short time. Some breakdowns required consultation with and advice from the controllers and technicians in Mission Control at the Flight Center in Houston.

Difficulties started as early as the first flights of the Gemini program, the second phase in the American push to reach the Moon. (The first was the single-man Mercury program.) Gemini 3 blasted off 23 March, 1965, with astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young aboard. It made three orbits around the Earth and was supposed to re-enter the atmosphere at a very precise angle in order to achieve the greatest possible slowdown before landing. But the spacecraft's guidance computer did not work properly and it landed nearly sixty miles short of the target area where a US Navy carrier was waiting to pick it up.

Gemini 4 was launched on 3 June, 1965, with James A. McDivitt and Edward White aboard, and achieved an elliptical orbit between 100 and 170 miles above Earth. With McDivitt photographing him, White went for a 'spacewalk', but when he returned to the craft, the door of the capsule would not close. It took some time to fix that. In all, Gemini 4 made sixty-two Earth orbits, returning 7 June. As on the previous flight, its landing computer malfunctioned and the splashdown was again sixty miles short of the pick-up carrier.

When, on 21 August, 1965, Gemini 5 put L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., and Charles Conrad into orbit between 100 and 160 miles up, the heater for the oxygen malfunctioned and then the stabilizing rockets became erratic and other trouble cropped up. Mission Control gave the order to descend, which the craft did on 29 August, after a record eight-day flight.

Gemini 6, with Walter Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford aboard, wouldn't lift off the launching pad and the rocket motors had to be stopped - always a very dangerous process. Gemini 7 was supposed to make a rendezvous with Gemini 6 in space, but Mission Control decided to launch Gemini 7 first.

Gemini 7 was launched on 4 December, 1965, with Frank Borman and James Lovell aboard, and was placed in a circular parking orbit of less than 200 miles altitude, where it waited until 9 December, when Gemini 6 finally was able to lift off. Gemini 7's flight set a new endurance record of fourteen days and the planned rendezvous of the two spaceships took place without further complications.

Gemini 8 was launched on 16 March, 1966, with Neil Armstrong and David R. Scott aboard, and after only five revolutions around the globe succeeded in catching up and docking with an unmanned 3-ton Agena rocket that was already in orbit. But exactly 28 minutes after the successful docking there was real trouble. For no apparent reason, the two linked spacecraft began to spin. The astronauts in Gemini 8 decided to free themselves from the Agena, but the Gemini capsule continued to rotate faster and faster.

The astronauts themselves found the source of the trouble. One of the stabilizing rockets had failed to turn off and was causing the spin. All fifteen remaining stabilizers had to be reignited in turn to counteract the momentum caused by the spinning and to bring Gemini back to normal attitude. When this was finally achieved, only a quarter of the rocket fuel remained. Instead of the planned three-day flight in orbit, the mission had lasted only seven hours when Mission Control ordered Gemini 8 to return to Earth immediately.

Gemini 9, with Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan aboard, also had to carry out docking with another Agena rocket in orbit 180 miles up; but the Agena wouldn't start as planned on 17 May, 1966. Another Agena rocket was launched on 1 June, but some trouble on the launching pad delayed the start of Gemini 9 for two days. Finally, on 3 June, Stafford and Cernan lifted off and caught the Agena
after only three orbits. However, they could not dock properly because the locking system wasn't fully opened.

On the second day of the Gemini 9 mission Cernan stepped out into space but had to come back in a hurry. He was using up his energy four times faster than had been expected and had difficulties with orientation. Finally he could not see anything, because his helmet fogged up completely. The planned experiment with an individual rocket propulsion system for the astronauts floating in space had to be abandoned, and the whole mission lasted only three days.

Gemini 10 was launched on 18 July, 1966, with John Young and Michael Collins aboard, 101 minutes after an Agena rocket had blasted off in a wrong orbit, again because of a computer error. The astronauts had to use up sixty per cent of their fuel before they caught up with the Agena and docked. The two linked ships then used the big Agena rocket motor to reach an orbit 480 miles up and find the other Agena (of Gemini 8) that was orbiting the globe. The first triple rendezvous in space was accomplished.

Gemini 11 took off on 12 September, 1966, with Richard Gordon and Charles Conrad aboard, 1 hour 37 minutes after lift-off of an Agena rocket. It took them only 94 minutes to catch it and dock, an important achievement in fuel economy. The next day Gordon took a walk in space detaching a cable from the Agena and fastening it to Gemini. This operation was scheduled to last for 107 minutes, but Gordon (like Cernan before) had trouble with his respiration, tired fast, and ran out of breath in 38 minutes. He had to return to the Gemini capsule, whereupon both astronauts started up the big Agena motor and lifted themselves to a new altitude record of 850 miles above Earth. In this new orbit Gordon made another space walk without difficulties.

Gemini 12, the last of the series, had its lift-off on 11 November, 1966 with James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin aboard. It made the link-up with its Agena on the third orbit. Three space walks were planned, but Mission Control discovered some instability in the linked-up pair and refused permission to use the big Agena motor. Instead the astronauts had to climb to a higher orbit using only the small auxiliary motors. That was accomplished and Aldrin had his three walks without incident. As we see now, not one of the ten Gemini flights was free of troubles or obstacles, but all missions were accomplished approximately on time and without any loss of life. That was possible mainly because of the composure and the extraordinary technical competence of the astronauts. The European astronautical engineers should learn a lesson from these experiences of the American space program. They are not, as they think, the only ones with troubles. Three of the most capable American astronauts died when the real drama started, in the fire on the ground in the Apollo 6 capsule during the very last test before the flight.

But the astronauts were not limited to equipment troubles. They saw things during their missions that could not be discussed with anyone outside of NASA. It is very difficult to obtain any specific information from NASA, which still exercises a very strict control over any disclosure of these events.

It seems that all Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin - flying saucers, or UFO's (unidentified flying objects), if you want to call them by that name. Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence.

I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus' to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules. However, his announcements were barely noticed by the general public. It was a little different when James Lovell on board the Apollo 8 command module came out from behind the moon and said for everybody to hear: 'We have been informed that Santa Claus does exist!' Even though this happened on Christmas Day 1968, many people sensed a hidden meaning in those words that were not difficult to decipher.

James McDivitt was apparently the first to photograph an unidentified flying object, on 4 June, 1965, when he was over Hawaii aboard Gemini 4. Frank Borman and James Lovell took magnificent photographs of two UFOs following Gemini 7 on 4 December, 1965, at a distance of a few hundred yards. The UFOs looked like gigantic mushrooms with their propulsion systems clearly showing a glow on the underside.
The following year, on 12 November, 1966, James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin in Gemini 12 also saw two UFOs at slightly over half a mile from the capsule. These were observed for quite some time and photographed repeatedly. The same happened to Frank Borman and James Lovell in Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve 1968, and to Thomas Stafford and John Young aboard Apollo 10 on 22 May, 1969. The UFOs showed up both during the orbit around the Moon and on the homeward flight of Apollo 10.

Finally, when Apollo II made the first Moon landing on the Sea of Tranquility and, only moments before Armstrong stepped down the ladder to set foot on the Moon, two UFOs hovered overhead. Edwin Aldrin took several pictures of them. Some of these photographs have been published in the June 1975 issue of
Modern People
magazine. The magazine did not tell where it got them, vaguely hinting at some Japanese source.

There was even some talk that the Apollo 13 mission carried a nuclear device aboard that could be set off to make measurements of the infrastructure of the Moon and whose detonations would show on the charts of several recording seismographs placed in different locations. The unexplained explosion of an oxygen tank in the service module of Apollo 13 on its flight to the Moon, according to rumors, was caused deliberately by a UFO that was following the capsule to prevent the detonation of the atomic charge that could possibly have destroyed or endangered some Moon base established by extraterrestrials. Well, there was a lot of talk and there still is.

It was also said that during their flights, our astronauts frequently felt as if some external forces were trying to take over their minds. They experienced strange sensations and visions. What seems almost certain is that some of the astronauts did have psychological problems and changes of personality after their missions in space. Some turned deeply religious, some seemed to develop mental trouble - facts that, of course, could be ascribed to pure coincidence without particular significance.

The experiments in telepathy carried out in space by some astronauts have been discussed and even published. Special symbol cards of geometric figures were used to transmit thought from the participant in orbit around the Moon to the correspondent on the surface of the Earth. Most of these experiments were successful, much more so than similar telepathic experiments conducted on Earth, which generally had a lower score.

Then there is the case of astronaut Gordon Cooper that arouses curiosity for more than one reason. He was the pilot of Mercury 9 in 1963 and of Gemini 5 in 1965. He was unquestionably one of our most skilled space pilots, yet he never flew an Apollo. Gordon Cooper, now manufacturing skydiving parachutes after having quit the space program, has never told anyone outside of NASA what he saw in space. But there are those who think NASA may have removed him from the Apollo flights because he had seen too much.

It is also curious that this man, who is not only an astronaut but also a scientist, has now become a firm believer in extraterrestrial life and civilizations and is convinced that space visitors to Earth have been around for a long time, from the most distant past up to this very day. Not long ago Gordon Cooper participated in an archaeological expedition to South America that discovered the remnants of a very old and very advanced civilization dating back more than five thousand years. Pottery, sculptures, and hieroglyphs very similar to Egyptian artifacts of the same period were discovered, confirming once more the theory the Egyptian and American cultures had a common origin.

It is quite natural for a famous astronaut to be interested in ancient astronauts, but one may still wonder whether Cooper did not acquire his sudden interest in extraterrestrial civilizations by seeing for himself in space, things that he did not have the right to tell us.

THE CONSTANT OF NINEVEH

For thousands of years, astrologers and mathematicians have been greatly impressed by the majestic regularity of the stars moving in the skies. For millennia they tried hard to discover the secrets of this marvelous clock. These sky watchers realized that a very long period of time, one probably encompassing millions of years, had to exist that would represent in even numbers, the revolutions of all the celestial objects. At the end of such a constant period, all the bodies of the firmament would again find themselves in their original positions on the band of the zodiac.